Foxygen

Concert at het Dok

Concert at het Dok

Concert at het Dok

Foxygen

Between ode and irony
Pastiche, irony, satire … by now we’re used to such types of humour in the theatre, but in music it still feels a bit unusual. For best friends Sam France and Jonathan Rado, however, this aspect of their music is indispensable. As teenagers they were already making albums in their garage with such iconic titles as Electric Sun Machine and Catfood Dogfood. These days the gentlemen approach affairs with even more aplomb as Foxygen. On their newest album Hang, released this year, they are accompanied by a 40-strong symphonic orchestra, with which they honour classic American artists like George Gershwin, Billy Joel and Meat Loaf. With a wry smile, Foxygen give their own trademark twist to the term ‘baroque pop’, balancing like trapeze artists between the talented serious act they are, and the twenty-somethings who tend not to take things too seriously.

”France and Rado beg, borrow, and steal from 20th-century legends in uniquely 21st-century ways, deconstructing their favorite Stones, Bowie, and Lou Reed records and brazenly re-assembling those elements into free-wheeling songs that melt old sounds into weird, wild shapes.